Built to last

Built to last

John Wood succeeds Governor William H. Bissell, the first Illinois governor to die while in office. He declined to run for governor later that year and was appointed Quartermaster General for the State of Illinois after the Civil War began in April, 1861, serving in this capacity until those duties came under the federal War Department.

Historical Markers

Since 1934, the Illinois State Historical Society has erected more than 500 historical markers statewide. Subjects of historical significance to Illinois are co-sponsored by local organizations and supporters. The Illinois State Historical Society coordinates the placement and management of historical markers throughout the state.

Submit your Bicentennial event

Do you have an exciting local history news story or an event that you would like to share? Use this form to submit it and after a quick review it will be added to our news roll or events calendar. There is even a special category for Bicentennial events. The goal is to add news and events from all over the state to celebrate Illinois’ rich history. Get involved and get the word out about news and events in your area.

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Join us for a celebration of Illinois history and the people that help tell the story of the Prairie State. Dinner and awards banquet in Menard County, Illinois, home of the New Salem State Historic Site.

Volume 111 Number 4 Winter 2018

We close 2018 with three fascinating articles that illuminate the social and cultural history of Illinois in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In “Charles Dickens, Cairo, and the Panic of 1837,” Peter Pellizzari analyzes the mix of truth and myth that drove western land speculation in the lead up to the Panic of 1837. At the center of Pellizzari’s story is Darius Blake Holbrook, Cairo’s chief promoter and financier in the 1830s. The town of Cairo, and Americans like Holbrook, also served as source material for parts of Charles Dickens’ novel, The Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit, first published serially in 1842–44. Pellizzari unpacks Holbrook’s career as Cairo’s preeminent booster—artfully blending truth and fiction, Holbrook induced investors to drop huge sums into Cairo land and other ventures. Holbrook’s financial schemes, of course, like castles made of sand, disintegrated in the wake of the Panic of 1837. In this way Holbrook was a real life version of Zephaniah Scudder, Dickens’ fictional land agent who dazzles Chuzzlewit with alluring images of Eden, a fictional American river town unmistakably inspired by real life Cairo, which Dickens had seen during his travels to America in 1842. Dickens’ critical relationship to antebellum American society emerges here as one important source of the British novelist’s ouvre. Also striking is Pellizzari’s convincing account of how fiction and fact—myth and reality—were deployed by boosters like Holbrook in the service of western land speculation. While the macroeconomic forces that fueled the Panic of 1837 have received much scholarly attention (and rightfully so), Pellizzari’s tale of greed, hope, allure, and illusion points to an equally important aspect of antebellum economic history: The cultural mores that sustained market transactions (and a market bubble in western land) in the years running up to the panic.

It is a commonplace that Irish labor built the Illinois & Michigan Canal. Yet few scholars have bothered to study the Irish immigrant experience in the antebellum period outside of urban contexts like Chicago or New York City, or the coal fields of Pennsylvania. What sustained Irish communities in the many small, rural towns that grew along the I&M Canal Corridor in the decades before the Civil War? In “Canal Diggers, Church Builders: Dispelling Stereotypes of the Irish on the Illinois & Michigan Canal Corridor,” Eileen McMahon examines Irish immigrant agency downstate, in towns that dot the prairie. Central to Irish immigrant life was the Catholic Church. The parish served as the focal point of a rich immigrant experience in a foreign land; as a force for communitybuilding, ethnic pride and identity, and eventual assimilation. McMahon’s study of small-town Irish community formation and the efforts to establish parishes across the Canal Corridor enlarges our understanding of the antebellum Irish experience.

Finally, we close with a study of the Depression-era collaboration between two Illinois-born artists. In “Doris and Russell Lee: A Marriage of Art,” Mary Jane Appel traces the mutually creative practices that shaped both Doris’s American Scene paintings and Russell’s work as a documentary photographer for the Farm Security Administration. As Appel demonstrates, the married couple shared a “reciprocal relationship with a fluid exchange of ideas and artistic visions.” The rural imagery that suffused the Lees’ work, of course, trace back to their Midwest and specifically Illinois roots. But Appel’s larger contribution is to establish the artists’ collaborative working methods, their creat

Volume 22, Number 1

The Illinois bicentennial commemoration wrapped up for the Illinois State Historical society with our 2018 History Symposium on December 3 at the University of Illinois Springfield. Many thanks to our excellent speakers––Michael Wiant, Bill Kemp, Devin Hunter, and Bob Sampson––for donating their time and talents to the program.

This year brings us another anniversay to celebrate: the 120th anniversary of the ISHS, which was organized on May 19, 1899. The Society continues to be the leading advocate for the promotion of historical research and understanding of our Prairie State history. With our dedicated Board of Directors, Advisors, and staff we seek to expand the reach of our organization into every home in the state of Illinois and beyond, but that kind of mission requires the participation of every member of the Society too. Please do your part by renewing your membership (if you have not already done so), and by sharing our publications and programs with Illinois history advocates in your community. Consider sponsoring a public library membership, nominating a community museum exhibit or local history author for an award, or sharing news of a historical event in your hometown. We all learn when we share our history.

Join Bruce Kraig, Culinary Historians of Northern Illinois, and Michelle Podkowa, DuPage County Historical Museum, as they discuss "A Rich and Fertile Land”. Kraig and Podkowa examine how American food habits transformed the Midwest from virgin prairies to the nation’s farming heartland. Podkowa will talk about how her family’s history is a living example of how this happened and what life is like “down on the farm”.

In celebration of Irish heritage in Illinois, Dr. Eileen McMahon, professor and chair of the History program at Lewis University, will discuss her research on the parish communities found along the Illinois & Michigan Canal, and the Irish immigrants who built this vital passageway.

Dr. Theodore Karamanski, professor of History and Public History Director at Loyola University Chicago, will present on the Irish in the Civil War. Live music by ​Wild Columbine.

On Sunday, April 7, the Madison County Historical Society will present a program by Paul Shetley, 5,000 Miles through History: The Ninth Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment in the Civil War. The program will begin at 2:00 pm in the fellowship hall of Immanuel United Methodist Church at 800 North Main Street in Edwardsville.

The presentation chronicles the Ninth Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment from April 1861 through July 1865. Mr. Shetley will use maps, photographs, videos, and reproductions of Civil War period weapons and equipment to provide a window into the life of these Illinois soldiers.

If you live in a historic district or in a house which is a local landmark or on the National Register of Historic Places, you may be eligible for an 11-year property tax assessment freeze. Join architectural historian Susan Benjamin of Benjamin Historic Certifications for an illustrated talk about how to take advantage of this little-known benefit.

Please do not use this button to submit or follow-up on submissions for the Illinois Heritage or Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society. Instead visit the links below for the correct submission information.